Captivity versus freedom
Many of the characters in the book are prisoners of war at some point. Cynthia Ann Parker, for example, was an American settler stolen in a Comanche raid at age nine. Unlike her older relative Rachel Parker, who successfully escaped, Cynthia Ann Parker is raised Comanche and assimilates completely, to the point where when she is recaptured by American forces she is unable to reintegrate. Her "rescuers" do not permit her to leave in search of her older two children or in search of the only culture and family she knows.
Later, Quanah Parker and his followers must choose whether to continue fighting to the death, or whether to accept life on a reservation. Many regarded (and continue to regard) reservation life as a form of captivity.
Perverse incentives
Throughout the book, from time to time a US government policy creates a "perverse incentive" that causes people to do the opposite of what would ordinarily be expected or desired. For example, a treaty that limits westward expansion of the American nation to the Mississippi results in the Indian nations having vast prairie lands to live in a hunter-gatherer fashion should they so desire. These lands, which would make tempting farmland, are irresistable to American settlers, who sneak over the river to colonize illegally. When they start farming in "Indian Territory" to the point where it causes conflict with the various Indian tribes, or when the settlers are the victims of raids, the outcry is sufficient to create an incentive for the US government to violate the treaty it signed by sending soldiers to protect the illegal settlers.
The early "peace" policy, based on appeasement, rewarded individual bands for signing treaties with the US government but later breaking them. Every time a new treaty was signed, the tribe that signed it not only got to keep whatever they took during the raids, but received lavish gifts as well. There was no reward for simply upholding the treaty.
Culture change
The hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the Comanche changes over the course of the book chiefly in response to interactions with other human cultures.
The Comanche begin as a primitive nomadic hunter-gatherer culture, develop into a more rounded First Nations culture by adopting the Sun Dance and other tradition from neighboring peoples, and changes into a rapidly moving horse-based culture after its adoption of Spanish cavalry mounts. Once mounted, the Comanche were unique in their ability to fight from horseback and travel long distances quickly. This gave them an advantage in hunting, and there was a market for buffal hides, so their tribal economy shifted away from hunting, gathering, and raiding into a nomadic culture built around killing and skinning buffalo for trade.
Upon encountering the American expansion westward, which was not possible to resist militarily due to the amount of firepower and military support on the American side. the Comanche people eventually adopted a more sedentary, agrarian way of living.
Revenge
Until the arrival of European settlers, and well into the European/American colonial era, there was a lot of conflict between rival tribes and nations. The Comanche fought frequently with the Kiowa and the Apache, and the prevailing custom of war involved cycle after cycle of retaliatory strikes, the likes of which had not existed in mainstream European warfare for centuries. But in North America, use of terror-inspiring tactics such as torture and gang rape were common ways to discourage an enemy. So, when European settlers began pressing into Comanche territory, it was inevitable that the conflict take a familiar form. During what would later be called the Indian Wars, retaliatory scalpings, torture, and murder of captives took place on both the American and Indian sides.
One way in which Quanah Parker and Isa-Tai originally united the various Comanche tribes to follow the Quahadi tribe in a war of ethnic cleansing against the invading white settlers was by appealing to their desire for retaliation.
Logistics
The one thing that made the Comanche so formidable and so initially unpredictable was the way in which they could travel long distances quickly to attack without warning. Their superior horsemanship and their ability to travel light made them the North American equivalent of the Mongol hordes that threatened medieval Europe. It was not until the American forces developed reasonable logistical ability, accompanied by superior military technology in the form of firearms, that they were able to make serious headway against the Comanche forces.
Tradition
Although the leaders of the Comanche appealed to tradition in order to lead their people, and although they were fighting for control of their own land and the right to live in what had become their traditional ways, the Comanche traditions did indeed change over the centuries, particularly when their culture shifted to revolve around the use of horses. Yet the same tradition and beliefs that made the Comanche such aggressive and dreaded warriors also made their tactics extremely predictable to opponents who lived long enough to study them.
